Mid-November concerts at Bates reflect the diversity and international scope of the arts at the college.

In the span of four days, the college’s Olin Arts Center Concert Hall presents an evening of Vietnamese performing arts, two performances of Carl Orff’s choral masterpiece “Carmina Burana” and an afternoon of Indonesian music and shadow puppetry.

Songful Vietnam: Three Rivers — One Source, featuring performers in a variety of traditional genres, takes place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14.

The Bates College Choir, under the direction of John Corrie, performs “Carmina Burana” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 15-16.

All those performances are open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required, available at bit.ly/oacbates. The Olin Arts Center Concert Hall is located at 75 Russell St. For more information, please call 207-786-6163 or email olinarts@bates.edu.

‘Songful Vietnam’

Under the artistic direction of Phong Nguyen, five performers from Vietnam and the United States offer Songful Vietnam: Three Rivers — One Source, an evening of music, poetry, dance and dramatic pieces from the traditions of the Hong (“Red”), Huong (“Perfume”) and Mekong river regions.

The event is co-sponsored by the departments of art and visual culture, music and theater, by the Asian studies program and by the Bates College Museum of Art.

The diverse works on the program represent traditional, ethnic and contemporary influences, and draw on the lowland and Central Highland cultures of Vietnam.

Phong Nguyen is a world-renowned performer and scholar of Vietnamese traditional music. Raised in the Mekong Delta, he comes from a family of musicians and is a traditionally trained artist. He sings a large repertoire of rural folk songs and is accomplished on many Vietnamese instruments. He has given numerous lectures and workshops throughout North America and the world on the musical culture of Vietnam.

Nguyen will be joined by: David Badagnani, who specializes in new and improvised music for the English horn and oboe, as well as a variety of international wind, string and percussion instruments, primarily from Asia;

Nguyen Thi Ngoc Khanh, a recipient of the Artist of Merit award from Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture for her contribution to the theatrical art called Hat Boi in Southern Vietnam;

Nguyen Tan Ton Nu Y Nhi, who is making her concert debut in this tour of “Tuneful Vietnam” and performs the art songs of the former imperial city of Hue;

and Khuong Van Cuong, a singer and flutist who performs minstrel songs, a rare genre that has only recently been revived in post-war Vietnam.

John Corrie conducts the Bates College Choir.

‘Carmina Burana’

“Carmina Burana” may get its broadest exposure nowadays through the popularity of its opening theme as end-of-the-world movie soundtrack music. But in fact, the monumental choral work that German composer Orff created in the 1930s is a musical setting of poems dating back to the 13th century and celebrating nature, fate, tavern society and especially love.

The Bates College Choir is composed of 60 singers, including 10 student soloists. This production of “Carmina Burana” is arranged for two pianos and six percussionists including three Bates students. The pianists for these performances are Chiharu Naruse and Bridget Convey of the college’s applied music faculty.

Corrie began teaching musicianship at Bates in 1982, conducting the College Choir in 1986 and teaching voice in 1991, and he became college organist in 2005. He is a harpsichord and organ performer with degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, Northwestern University and Yale University. He has been artistic director of the Maine Music Society since 2006.

Sumarsam in performance.

‘The Flower Battle’

The Bates Gamelan Orchestra, a student ensemble performing Indonesian percussion-based music, will be joined by three guest artists from Wesleyan University for “The Flower Battle.” Puppet master Sumarsam and musician I. M. Harjito are well-known and highly respected gamelan musicians. Also performing is Maho Ishiguro, a doctoral student who will play a gamelan instrument called the “gender.”

This “wayang kulit,” or shadow puppet performance, is an hour-long story adapted from the Sanskrit epic “Mahabharata.” During a tumultuous time, the hero Arjuna attempts to clear his mind by taking a journey in a forest of great beauty. He and his companions are confronted by the fanged Cakil, a demon sent by the enemy, and his minions.

Ultimately they engage in the “Flower Battle,” which gives the puppeteer a chance to demonstrate his skill at the intricate manipulation of several puppets.

A wayang kulit has not been performed on a Bates stage in eight years. The “dhalang,” or puppet master, has the difficult task of making the puppet move, speak and sing, as well as directing the musicians that accompany his performance and adding sound effects, usually with his feet.

Born in East Java, Sumarsam (who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name) took part in an all-night performance of Indonesia’s traditional, percussion-based gamelan music when he was 7, sitting in for a sleepy drummer. He joined that ensemble at age 8 and stayed with music.

He went to Wesleyan in the early 1970s as a visiting artist, earned his master’s degree there in 1976 and in 1992 earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell. Today he is an adjunct professor of music and director of graduate studies in Indonesian music and theater at Wesleyan.

A renowned Indonesian musician, Harjito is an artist-in residence at Wesleyan, where he teaches gamelan performance.

The puppets that Sumarsam will use in the performance are part of a collection of more than 300 on permanent loan to Bates College. David Eisler, an attorney in Dover, N.H., has loaned the collection to Bates to honor the memory of his father, Dr. Milton Eisler. David Eisler made the loan, he says, to ensure that the collection remains intact.

The Bates College Choir, conducted by John Corrie, performs Fauré’s Requiem and Lauridsen’s Lux Aeterna at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 29-30, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

First composed in 1888 and revised a dozen years later, the Fauré Requiem is a setting of the traditional Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, with the text significantly altered. Today the Requiem is both the best-known piece by this French composer and one of the best-loved treatments of the Mass for the Dead.

It is distinguished by a mood of “peacefulness and serenity,” in the words of music historian John Bawden. “The work often been described, quite justly, as a Requiem without the Last Judgment. . . . [It] is impossible not to be moved by the ethereal beauty of this humble masterpiece.”

Lauridsen wrote Lux Aeterna in 1997. A 25-minute work in five movements, it’s a setting for various Latin texts about light.

“I composed Lux Aeterna in response to my Mother’s final illness,” the composer writes, “and found great personal comfort and solace in setting to music these timeless and wondrous words about Light, a universal symbol of illumination at all levels — spiritual, artistic and intellectual.”

“The piece is often compared to Brahms’ Requiem, also written after the passing of the composer’s mother, but ‘without the 19th-century guilt’ — no Day of Judgment or gloom here, just generosity and radiance throughout,” writes Chicago Chamber Choir Artistic Director Timm Adams.

“Lauridsen uses the chant-like melodies and sophisticated counterpoint of the high Renaissance, especially the music of Josquin, for his inspiration in this composition.”

Three concerts at Bates feature choral music for the holiday season, and compositions by Bates faculty played by a visiting string quartet.

The Bates College Choir performs a holiday program including Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1.

Presented by the Olin Arts Alive music series and the Bates College Museum of Art, the renowned Momenta Quartet performs new music by two Bates composers at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 4.

Both concerts take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission to the choir concerts is free, but tickets are required. Admission to the Momenta Quartet event is $12 and tickets are available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students; please reserve by calling 207-786-6163. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Bates College Choir

Directed by John Corrie, the choir presents a program featuring Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols” and Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Love Songs.”

Each of Whitacre’s five songs captures a moment that he and his wife, soprano Hila Plitmann, shared, and which she rendered as poems that he set to music.

Momenta Quartet

The Momenta program includes the premiere of Bates composers Miura and William Matthews, as well as music by Debussy, Kee Yong Chong and Jason Kao Hwang.

Praised by The New York Times for its “focused, fluid performance” and by contemporary music website Sequenza 21 for its “fire, fantasy and absolute musical commitment,” the Momenta Quartet has premiered more than 50 works in the past seven years and has collaborated with more than 80 composers.

Based in New York City, the quartet performs nationally and internationally. The quartet’s repertoire ranges widely from the classics to contemporary. The members of Momenta are violinists Emilie-Anne Gendron and Adda Kridler, violist Stephanie Griffin and cellist Michael Haas.

Inspired by the current Bates College Museum of Art astrophotography exhibition Starstruck, Miura’s “Singularity” adapts cosmic radiation readings to serve as the harmonic basis for his piece.

The imagery in “Mare Tranquillitas,” a musical and video piece composed by William Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music at Bates, incorporates astrophotographs from “Starstruck” and photographs of Momenta’s instruments.

The Momenta Quartet will also offer a critique of music by Bates student composers at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 5, in Olin Concert Hall. This workshop is free and open to the public.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/11/16/olin-momenta-choir/feed/0Bach, ‘Bhangra,’ blues, Baroque and more on tap as Bates announces fall concert seasonhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2012/08/29/fall-concert-season/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/08/29/fall-concert-season/#commentsWed, 29 Aug 2012 12:10:02 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=58700The autumn 2012 concert season represents the best of music from Bates and the world.]]>

Red Baraat

Opening with Ethiopian-born Finnish singer-songwriter Mirel Wagner and concluding with the college’s own Jazz Band, the autumn 2012 concert season at Bates College represents the best of music from Bates and the world.

The season includes the debut of the Olin Arts Alive concert series featuring internationally renowned and emerging performers.

Classical music highlights include visits by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the contemporary music ensemble Momenta Quartet, performing a piece by a Bates composer. In addition, pianist Frank Glazer, an artist in residence at the college since 1980, will offer a season-long series comprising music from his most cherished Bates programs.

In a joint presentation with L/A Arts — one of several undertaken by Bates this academic year — rhythm and blues singer Francine Reed returns to Olin a year after her smash appearance here. Other familiar faces include the Bates College Orchestra and College Choir. And new to the college is Red Baraat, a most exciting ensemble combining the sounds of South Asia and the New World.

With exceptions as noted, most concerts are open to the public free of charge and take place in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St. To buy tickets, please visit batestickets.com. For more information or to arrange tickets for the free concerts, please contact olinarts@bates.edu or 207-786-6135.

Here’s the season schedule:

Mirel Wagner (7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12): Born in Ethiopia, raised in Finland, this folk and blues singer is known for her minimalist style and emotive depth. Note: This Olin Arts Alive series concert takes place at Keigwin Amphitheater at Lake Andrews, next to the Olin Arts Center. Rain site: Olin Concert Hall. Learn more.

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program I (7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 14): The renowned pianist begins a season of music from his most cherished Bates programs. Tonight: Handel, Mozart, Debussy, Chopin and Beethoven (Pathétique). Admission: $10 per concert or all eight programs at $65 per seat, at batestickets.com. Proceeds benefit the Frank & Ruth Glazer Scholarship Fund. A limited number of free tickets are available for seniors and students; contact olinarts@bates.eduor 207-786-6163.

Red Baraat (7:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30): Driven by bandleader Sunny Jain’s dhol, a North Indian drum, this uproarious Brooklyn band blends Brit-Indi Bhangra with funky New World brass. Admission $15/ $10, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors or students. To reserve, please email olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6): One of America’s most compelling pianists, Jeremy Denk is among the six CMS players in an Olin Arts Alive performance. Featured is music by Bruch, Brahms and Dohnányi. Admission $15/ $10, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors or students. To reserve, please email olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Francine Reed

Frank Glazer Retrospective, Program II (7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12): See Program I, above, for artist and admission details. Tonight: Schoenberg’s Six Short Pieces, along with music by Schubert, Brahms and Chopin.

Francine Reed (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13): Olin Arts Alive and L/A Arts present an evening with this blues, gospel and jazz singer. A hit at Olin a year ago, the openhearted, full-throated Reed is the widely recognized voice in Lyle Lovett’s Large Band, but has a powerhouse career in her own right. Admission: $15 / $10, increasing to $20 /$10 on the day of the show. Available at batestickets.com. Learn more.

Alexandre Tharaud (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21). Olin Arts Alive presents the up-and-coming French pianist. “Tharaud is dazzlingly nimble-fingered and often admirably sensitive, without romanticizing,” wrote the BBC. A program of Scarlatti, Ravel, Chopin and Liszt. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com; free tickets are available for the first 100 seniors and students. Email olinarts@bates.edu to reserve. Learn more.

Rollin’ to Olin(12:30 p.m. on three Thursdays: Nov. 1, 8 and 15). The public is invited to this free arts-literacy program for local schoolchildren. A Bates College Museum of Art presentation takes place at 12:30 p.m., followed by a mini-concert from 1 to 1:30.

Europa Galante

Europa Galante (7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2): Olin Arts Alive presents a Baroque music ensemble from Italy, founded and still directed by violinist Fabio Biondi. The program “Apotheosis and Folia” includes music by Vivaldi, Couperin, Mascitti, Corelli and C.P.E. Bach. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students; reserve by emailing olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Momenta Quartet (7:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4): Olin Arts Alive and the Bates College Museum of Art present this quartet whose repertoire ranges widely from the classics to contemporary — such as tonight’s premiere by Bates composer Hiroya Miura, commissioned for the museum’s exhibition Starstruck. Also on the program: music by Debussy, Kee Yong Chong and Jason Kao Hwang. Admission $12, available at batestickets.com. Free tickets are available to the first 100 seniors and students; reserve by emailing olinarts@bates.edu. Learn more.

Bates College Jazz Band (7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5) Tom Snow leads the band in arrangements for large and small ensembles, and genres from big band to bossa nova to funk. Free, but tickets required.

Conducted by Lecturer in Music John Corrie, the Bates College Choir performs the second and third sections of Handel’s beloved oratorio Messiah at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 16-17, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

The concerts are open to the public at no cost, but because of limited seating, tickets are required. For tickets and more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Written in just 24 days in 1741 and considered Georg Friedrich Handel’s masterpiece, Messiah draws from the Old and New Testaments to lay out the Christ story and its significance to humankind.

The oratorio’s debut, in Dublin in April 1742, “seems to have been one of those rare times in history when a transcendently great work is immediately perceived at its full value,” writes music historian Jan Swafford.

“There are so many breathtaking moments for both the vocal soloists and the chorus,” says choir director Corrie, a Lewiston resident who is also artistic director of the Maine Music Society. “So many familiar melodies and joyous sounds.”

While the piece is commonly associated with Christmas, its themes pertain to both Christmas and Easter. Because the entire work lasts about three hours, the choir performed the first part of the oratorio last December.

“Messiah is one of those milestones that every choral singer should know,” Corrie says. It’s important for singers to learn the entire piece, so by dividing it between two programs he enables them “to learn all of it, but spread out the effort over two semesters of work.”

Led by Maine jazz pianist Tom Snow, the Bates College Jazz Band swings the Olin auditorium at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 8

Finally, the college’s Gamelan Orchestra, directed by Assistant Professor of Music Gina Fatone, presents a program including an excerpt from Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin, Cello and Javanese Gamelan at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 9. This concert will be held in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Admission is free to all concerts, but due to limited seating, tickets are required for the choir and jazz band performances. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

For the choir’s winter concert, the ensemble will perform a selection of opera choruses ranging from familiar to little-known masterpieces. In addition to leading the choir, teaching voice and serving as the chapel organist at Bates, Corrie is artistic director for the Maine Music Society, a local orchestral and choral organization.

Erica Butler directs the Steel Pan Orchestra, which performs music of the West Indies on authentic instruments.

The jazz band performs bossa nova, funk and classic swing. The upcoming program includes tunes by Tower of Power, Pat Metheny, Billy Strayhorn and Count Basie.

The final concert showcases the gamelan, a traditional Indonesian percussion ensemble that also often includes vocals, flutes and stringed instruments. Bates has two sets of gamelan instruments, a large Central Javanese gamelan and a smaller Sundanese set, and both will be featured.

In addition to the Harrison excerpt, the program includes a composition in Balinese style arranged by top Balinese contemporary composer I Dewa Ketut Alit, who has been in residence this fall, and two West Javanese songs sung by guest vocalist Jennifer Woodruff, visiting assistant professor in the music department.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem and other works will be performed by the Bates College Choir, directed by John Corrie, at 8 p.m. Friday, April 2, and Saturday, April 3, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Mozart was working his Requiem on his deathbed in 1791, leaving it for protégés to complete. A masterpiece of the choral repertoire, the work is “an unlikely but unforgettable alloy of ecclesiastical grandeur, Baroque fugue and the subtlest mood painting,” wrote a Portland Phoenix reviewer in 2001.

“Known for operatic music that can convey scene or character with a handful of notes, Mozart used that skill here to portray a believer facing death: feeling dread at the end of this life, anxiety at the prospect of judgment, abject yearning for forgiveness.”

The choir will be accompanied by an orchestra consisting of students and community members.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2010/03/24/mozart-requiem/feed/0'Go Tell It on the Mountain' is theme for annual holiday celebrationhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2009/12/07/lessons-carols0/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/12/07/lessons-carols0/#commentsMon, 07 Dec 2009 21:40:07 +0000http://home.bates.edu/?p=15891“Go Tell It on the Mountain” is this year’s theme for the annual holiday service of lessons and carols at Bates College, starting at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13, in the Bates College Chapel, College Street.

The event is sponsored by the Multifaith Chaplaincy, and admission is free. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

Featuring the talents of many members of the college community, the event includes musical offerings from the Bates College Choir, the Bates Gospel Choir and five student a cappella groups: the Crosstones, the Deansmen, the Manic Optimists, the Merimanders and TakeNote (the latter being a new ensemble). Also performing will be keyboardist John Corrie, Bates lecturer in music and choir director.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/12/07/lessons-carols0/feed/0Bates College Choir to perform works by Mozart and Fauréhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2009/03/23/bates-college-choir/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2009/03/23/bates-college-choir/#commentsMon, 23 Mar 2009 17:03:22 +0000http://batesviews.net/?p=2630

Directed by John Corrie, the Bates College Choir performs Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Coronation Mass” and Gabriel Fauré’s “Requiem” in concerts at 8 p.m. Friday and Sunday, March 27 and 29, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

He chose the Fauré and Mozart, Corrie says, “because they are among the masterworks that the choir should have the opportunity to perform. These works begin an exploration of the musical vocabulary of these incredible composers.”

The college choir has performed these works in the past, and Corrie calls them “important enough to revisit on a regular basis.”

“Requiem” is the best-known of Fauré’s larger-format works. Composed between 1887 and 1890, it was first performed in the U.S. in 1931 at a student concert, and was performed at Fauré’s own funeral.

“Everything I managed to entertain by way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem,” the composer said, “which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest.”

Mozart’s “Coronation Mass,” composed in 1779, is one of the most popular 17 extant settings of the Ordinary of the Mass, texts in Roman Catholic practice that are used without variation in every Mass. The piece was performed at the coronations of Leopold II and Francis II of Austria.

Directed by John Corrie, the Bates College Choir performs Benjamin Britten’s popular Ceremony of Carols in concerts at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 15 and 16, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Admission is free, but tickets are required. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or this olinarts@bates.edu.

Corrie is the artistic director of the Maine Music Society and a member of the college music faculty. He has directed the Bates choir since 1986.

The choir’s program also includes Vivaldi’s Gloria and Das Cartas, a piece by Hiroya Miura of the Bates music faculty.

An English composer and conductor, Britten wrote his paean to the Christmas season in March 1942, during a five-week voyage across the North Atlantic as he returned to England from America. He originally created the work as a series of unrelated songs and later organized it into the present 11-movement piece.

Set to a sparing musical fabric of harp and voices, the Middle English texts come from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems and are, for the most part, of 15th- and 16th-century origin.

The work was first sung by the Morriston Boys’ Choir, conducted by Britten, in London in December 1943.